54 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II. 



our fairs. So we have adopted the scheme in Iowa in most of the fairs 

 to give them amusements enough to bring them in, so that when they 

 get a little tired and want a place to sit down and rest after seeing 

 the educational exhibit we entertain them with our different amusements. 

 As fair men I think we will have to consider harness horse racing as 

 an amusement for our patrons. There are about ninety-two fairs in 

 the state I believe and I think about eighty out of the ninety-two give 

 harness races. 



You must be very careful in putting on a harness race program that 

 you don't overdo it. If you are a harness horse enthusiast you are a 

 little apt to make that the main part of your program. If you are not 

 a harness horse enthusiast and don't believe in such things you are 

 very apt to give such a minor place on your program to it that it don't 

 get you anywhere. About the otfly thing you must guard against is to 

 see that you get a happy medium as between harness racing and other 

 amusements for your fair. 



The way to get a good harness race program is in the first place to 

 have somebody in charge of that part of your program that knows the 

 business. The average fair secretary, and I don't say it with any sense 

 of disparagement, knows practically nothing about harness horse racing. 



You will appreciate undoubtedly that there are few men who are 

 just the right men. You should arrange for somebody to take that end 

 of it off your shoulders if you are not competent to do it yourself. If 

 you are, you will start in and decide first how much you want to give 

 and about what purses and classes will be suitable for the horses you 

 expect are in your immediate vicinity or will be at the time of your 

 races. It is much preferable for three or four fairs to combine in a 

 circuit as it makes advertising cheaper and they are apt to get more 

 horses by reason of having four or five weeks of races continuously 

 without making long, hard shifts. The next thing is to acquaint the 

 people that have horses with the fact that you are going to give a meet 

 and when you are going to. give it and what the classes are. The old 

 way of doing that used to be to order a lot of entry blanks printed and 

 then go and get a list of horsemen's addresses and mail out all these 

 entry blanks all over the country to them. That is now obsolete. There 

 are turf papers published that the horsemen take. About six or eight 

 weeks before your meet make out a program and send to the horse 

 papers and run it continuously for six or eight weeks. The average 

 fair is not before the second week in August and it is not after the 

 second week in September; they all come in about four weeks. Fairs 

 that come the 15th of August really should start advertising the middle 

 of June or possibly the first of June in the horse papers. 



You don't need a big whole page of the papers but get enough to let 

 the horsemen know you are going to have a meet at your town at the 

 county fair and you would like to have them there. You can dispense 

 with sending out any blanks by mail. Of course, you want some entry 

 blanks, but the average man who wants to enter, he knows how to enter, 

 he knows from the newspaper, and will write a letter with the entry in. 

 Then be sure to give the publication six or eight weeks in advance what 



